Who qualifies as an author
Authors must have made a substantial scholarly contribution, participated in drafting or critical revision, approved the submitted version, and accepted accountability for their contribution and the integrity of the work. SJS applies these requirements as the four conditions of the ICMJE recommendations, and all four must be met:
- substantial contribution to the conception or design of the work, or to the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data;
- drafting the work or revising it critically for important intellectual content;
- approval of the version submitted and of the version to be published;
- agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the work, including the accuracy and integrity of any part of it.
In surgical research this means that performing or assisting an operation, referring patients, collecting routine clinical data, or heading a department does not by itself confer authorship. Such contributions are recognised in the acknowledgements.
Contributors who are not authors
Contributors who do not meet the authorship criteria should be acknowledged with their permission. This includes technical help, data collection, statistical advice, language or editorial assistance, and the provision of materials, equipment, or funding.
The following are not acceptable and are treated as authorship violations under Publication Ethics:
- Gift or honorary authorship — naming a person who did not meet the criteria, including a supervisor or head of unit named by convention.
- Guest authorship — adding a senior or well-known name to improve the manuscript’s prospects.
- Ghost authorship — omitting a person who did meet the criteria, including a writer paid to draft the manuscript.
Order of authors and the corresponding author
The order of authors is decided by the authors themselves before submission and is not arbitrated by the journal. The corresponding author must ensure that all authors agree to submission, and that affiliations and contribution statements are accurate. The corresponding author is the journal’s point of contact throughout review, at proof, and after publication, and is responsible for communicating with co-authors and for responding to any question raised about the work.
Contribution and declaration statements
Every manuscript carries a statement describing what each author contributed, together with the ethics, consent, funding, competing-interest, and data-availability statements required by Publication Ethics and Data Availability and Reproducibility. Where a group or collaborative name is used, the individuals who take responsibility for the work must be identifiable.
Changes to authorship
Authorship changes require an explanation and agreement from all affected authors, including anyone being added and anyone being removed. A request is sent to sriwijayajournalsurgery@gmail.com by the corresponding author, with the written agreement of every author concerned.
Unresolved disputes may be referred to the relevant institution, which is the body competent to decide them, and processing may be paused while they are resolved. The journal does not adjudicate authorship disputes, and will not publish a manuscript whose authorship is contested. Where a dispute emerges after publication, the record is corrected under Corrections, Retractions and Article Updates.
Artificial intelligence cannot be an author
An AI tool cannot consent to submission, approve the final version, or take responsibility for the work, and therefore cannot meet the criteria above. It must not be listed as an author or named in the contribution statement as if it were a person. Substantive use of such tools is disclosed as set out in Use of AI Tools.
Accuracy of author metadata
Author names and affiliations are part of the permanent scholarly record and are deposited to Crossref with each article. Authors are asked to supply the given name and family name in the correct fields, and the full institutional affiliation at the time the work was done. Corrections to a published name or affiliation are made under Corrections, Retractions and Article Updates.
Read together with Publication Ethics, Use of AI Tools, Similarity and Plagiarism Policy and Corrections, Retractions and Article Updates. This policy is reviewed at least once a year.